A World of Extremely Comfortable Poor People

[BlackHatCoiner]

Everyone keeps asking whether AI is going to take their job.

This is the wrong question.

The question is what happens to the price of everything you own after it does.

Let me walk you through it.

Every technology in history was sold with the same sentence.

It won't replace you, it'll make you more productive. And every time, that was true.

The loom made the weaver faster. The tractor made the farmer bigger. The spreadsheet made the accountant sharper.

Notice a pattern.

The tool needed a human holding it.

That's the whole deal. That's the only reason wages ever went up.

Not policy. Not kindness, and definitely the government did not do you a favor.

Capital needed hands, and hands were scarce, so hands got paid higher in a world with more stuff.

AI is the first tool that doesn't need the hand.

So let's ask the only question that matters.

When the thing that made your labor valuable disappears, what's left that's still scarce?

What can AI NOT do?

It cannot make more land.

It cannot make more Bitcoin.

That's it. That's the list.

Now do the thought experiment nobody wants to do.

Your salary is the price of your time. AI is a machine that manufactures time.

Unlimited time. Time that doesn't sleep, doesn't unionize, doesn't negotiate.

What is your time worth in a world with infinite time?

Meanwhile the acre outside the city stays one acre. The apartment stays one apartment. And the 21 million definitely stay 21 million.

"But they'll take care of us. UBI is coming."

Sure. Let's think about that for a second.

Where does UBI come from?

It gets printed.

To get spent, right?

Right.

On what?

On the things that can't be printed.

UBI runs from the treasury, through your hands, and into the pockets of whoever owns the scarce thing at the other end.

You'll get a check every month and every month it'll buy you less land and less Bitcoin.

Every rich person understands this.

Billionaires are buying farmland at scale. Sovereign funds are buying energy. Nation-states are HODLing Bitcoin.

"Just learn to use AI."

Beautiful. Everyone learns to use AI.

A skill that everyone has is not a skill. It's a baseline. And baselines don't earn premiums, they earn minimums.

You'll be more productive than you have ever been in your life and you will be paid less for it, because so is the person willing to take your seat.

You cannot out-work a machine that works for free.

But you CAN own the asset everybody wants.

So why both? Why land AND Bitcoin?

Because there are two things coming for you, not one.

The machine takes your income. The state takes what's left.

Land protects you from the first. It's the oldest asset on earth, it feeds you, it houses you, it doesn't care what a model can do.

But land has a registry. Land has a tax assessor, and unfortunately, land cannot run away from him.

Bitcoin protects you from the second.

Land is your defense against the inflation.

Bitcoin is your defense against the faceless entities that cause it.  

And you need BOTH.

AI is not going to just create a world of poor people.

It's going to create a world of extremely COMFORTABLE poor people.

Cheap food. Cheap entertainment. Cheap distractions. Cheap this, cheap that, forever, delivered to a rented room you don't own, from a job you no longer have, funded by a check you did not earn.

Your standard of living may remain the same.

But your ownership trends to ZERO.

Those are not the same thing.

They have never been the same thing.

The peasant and the king both ate bread.

Being in this forum is one decision nobody in here has regretted.

But if you are honest with yourself, could you have made more bitcoin if you tried harder?

Take action TODAY.

Tomorrow is only going to get harder from now on.

[Exitoral]

Wow. What a great write up. But there's something worth pointing out. In a situation where AI takes jobs and people feel comfortable being poor because of how cheap things will be, there's another factor that can create and preserve the assets one has, which is called adaptability.

The ever adaptable will survive any economic shift by learning new skills, managing their finances well, and so on. So to actually acquire those assets, you have to be adaptable. And if you already have those assets, you still need adaptability to preserve them.

[Hypnotizer]

Some really great wake-up call!!

I’m really impressed by this writeup and tbh everything you said up here is worth noting.  

I’m also tired of hearing bored talk about this whole “AI will take people’s jobs  and you need to develop your skills to get hired in the future” because with this changes the real problem isn’t about “learning how to integrate and adapt to using AI” (as you’ve already mentioned that’ll become a baseline) rather it’s about what you own today that can truly give you a upper hand in the future, Land have proven to do that for as long as humanity has existed and Bitcoin is proving so since from its inception..

P.S: I got goosebumps while reading this, I was in complete awe…

 

Wow. What a great write up. But there's something worth pointing out. In a situation where AI takes jobs and people feel comfortable being poor because of how cheap things will be, there's another factor that can create and preserve the assets one has, which is called adaptability.

The ever adaptable will survive any economic shift by learning new skills, managing their finances well, and so on. So to actually acquire those assets, you have to be adaptable. And if you already have those assets, you still need adaptability to preserve them.

You can’t just jump into the process of buying lands and bitcoin without approaching how you can learn to adapt to the future, it’s very important but  I think the OP focuses more on the other side that people don’t talk about often….

[aoluain]

I'm glad I have 1 acre
I'm glad I can grow food
I'm glad I know some medicinal wild plants
I'm glad I have Bitcoin

AI though is t just quite at the stage of widespread job replacement.
realistically it isnt even at the stage of writing a detailed report on a subject, it really good
at reporting on a single page document, after that it hallucinates... but that may be just the
AI Joe Soap gets to use.

But I do believe the writing is on the wall ...

[ZAINmalik75]

So, the best plan for future:

1. Buy some land, or real estate property.
2. Buy bitcoins, as many as possible, or even portions of it.
3. And finally, learn to use AI.

The first two will take care of you in case you lose your job to an AI in the future, and the last one will create a possibility of you finding a new source of income, people are already doing it with AI, creating content, monetizing it, and making money from that, and in the future, it will be even wilder. One thing I agree with is that once everyone learns to use AI, it will be too saturated that every area will be too competitive and chances of you making through that competition will surely be tiny, but there can still be hope.

After all, if that doesn't work, you will at least have the other two options covering things up for you and taking care of everything.

[Floxynice]

These are indeed wise words that no one should overlook. You have already nailed it, and one thing I am taking away from it is the importance of owning something that AI cannot control.

Whether we like it or not, AI has come to stay, and it will continue to improve over time. As it advances, it will spread across several sectors of the economy, and we cannot stop that. While that time draws near, everyone should start preparing for the day when many of our sources of income may be taken over by AI.

Now that we have the freedom and can accumulate some bitcoins, we should do so because owning bitcoin remains one asset that is truly yours, without AI being able to tamper with it. Land in my country belongs to the government, one day they can demand for that land you think is yours for developmental purposes and you can't stop the government.

[treesintheforestooh]

Hard to disagree.

Reminds me of a YT channel/person I came across recently that really, really resonates. His name is Julian Whatley.

Here's one: The Rise of Techno-Feudalism: The Death of Markets

Another: Is AI the New Opiate?

Basically, what we're seeing now with much of "AI" - more accurately "LLM" as it's not actually "intelligence" - is something very similar to the rise of the priest class and religion itself years and years ago.

We have tech CEOs and all their followers saying how "AI is inevitable!" ... "AGI is coming and it's basically, like, god, bro!" ... "It's going to cure disease!" ... "You can upload your consciousness into a utopia!"

Should sound familiar.

Musk is the "work hard, work harder, sleep on the factory floor! keep working and you can leave this planet!" priest.

Altman is the "have faith and be humble... all will be well if you believe" priest.

They all need tithes investment to keep the charade gods markets happy.

[X-ray]

In a nutshell, the future is ownership. If you don't get one now, you aren't getting it in the future. Everything will be bought up by corporations including the precious Bitcoin.

If there is a time when we really need to keep stacking wealth to prepare for the future, right now is the best time to do.

[Die_empty]

The AI rave is growing everyday that you feel left behind if you are not learning these skills. It's not bad to acquire some of them that will make you do your job faster. However, the OP has raised some important points that are worth considering. As people begin to rush into the AI industry, supply will exceed demand, which will lead to a drop in earnings.

I have also learned that the focus should be on acquiring assets with limited supply. Land and Bitcoin stand out among their equals. I have nursed the idea of growing my food for a long time, but combining farming and work might become very stressful. But my focus now would be to acquire cheap land in rural areas. I don't want to be part of the comfortable poor.

[Luzin]

A long and interesting argument. But I find it a bit contradictory that all the effects will resonate depending on how technology and society adapt. So, society that keeps up with the developments will continue to be able to compete. AI is an innovation and it will continue to evolve. Jobs will decrease, but new jobs will also emerge. So we just need to adjust ourselves and keep growing. Maybe ownership of truly rare or productive assets will become increasingly important compared to just relying on income from work. History shows that every technological revolution also creates new types of jobs, business models, and investment opportunities. The main challenge is adapting while building ownership of assets that really have long term value not just Bitcoin and land, maybe gold too. IMO